A total of BGN 10 mln is needed for tourism advertising

“Bulgaria should allocate about BGN 10 mln to promote tourism in the countries where most tourists come from,” said Rolf Freitag, CEO of IPK International yesterday. He presented a study on the development of 10 tourism generating markets, which is part of the projects aimed at the drafting and implementation of a national tourism marketing strategy. The projects are implemented under Operational Programme Regional Development and are worth over €30 mln.

“Bulgaria has to rank its priority markets, and to assess where and how funds should be spent in order to achieve best results,” he said. Such a policy has not been implemented so far. According to experts, 15% of the total amount available must be allocated for advertising on the first three tourism generating markets - Romania, Germany and Britain, or some €1.5 mln per country. Around 12% should be earmarked for ads on the next three markets in the ranking - Russia, Sweden, Greece. “Some 5% of the funds have to be spent for the marketing of Bulgaria on the remaining markets such as Turkey, Serbia, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine,” said Freitag. The study of these markets and of the attitudes of foreigners and Bulgarians concluded that our country is being chosen because it is a cheap tourist destination, offering mostly sea and winter tourism opportunities.

Price is an important issue for both foreigners and Bulgarians when it comes down to their holiday. Bulgarians spend some €19-24 per day, while foreigners allocated - €71-88 per day . The average stay of Bulgarians is increasing but that of foreigners is on the decline, reported Alexander Tzvetkov from MicroStat Analytics Ltd.

Some 90% of the accommodations are concentrated on one-fifth of the country’s territory - in the towns of Nessebar, Balchik, and the cities of Varna and Sofia.

Still, merely 8% of Bulgarian tourists book through an agency, while this figure is between 45-60% for foreigners.

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